Foreword.

In the spirit of transparency, honesty and integrity which Three Dimensional Ethics does so much to promote, let me begin by owning up. The sad fact is that--like many of those who will consider reading this book and even greater numbers who won't--I find much of what passes for business ethics these days tedious, boring and not hugely helpful. Worse, when I find myself invited to some of the world's top companies and business schools to help them sensitise their staff or students to the ethical dimensions of modern management, the processes are often akin to sheep-dipping. A half-day--or if the school is really serious, a whole day--is devoted to dunking people in some of the issues that sank companies like Enron and left others veering out of control. It is like offering navigation training to ships' captains in time of war with one minor option on minefields and torpedoes.

When I started in the environmental field over 30 years ago, there were still industrial chaplains. If you wanted to discuss environmental issues, you were sometimes directed to these people. They were worthy, well-intentioned souls, but the more honest (or perceptive) among them admitted that their work was largely ineffective. Over time, as more and more companies collided with new societal attitudes, new processes of stakeholder engagement evolved. Leading companies also established special committees of their boards, to ensure that--as far as possible--ethical issues were identified and assessed in good time and good order.

But, as we all know, the Enron ethics statement was a misleading masterpiece, often quoted as a model before the company ran onto the rocks. Even businesses that survive major ethical collisions often fail to learn all the necessary lessons. A company like Shell, with its long-established statement of general business principles, nonetheless managed to hit not just one ethical iceberg in 1995, but two. And even after all of that pain, and the resulting determination, never to get itself into such a position again, the company still found itself back in hot political water recently when the financial markets woke up to the fact that some aspects of Shell's accounting for oil and gas reserves had veered towards New Economy-style wishful thinking.

Companies--like most of us--are creatures of their times. And one of the things that readers will find particularly helpful about Three Dimensional Ethics is the distilled versions of the thinking of people like Confucius, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Carol Gilligan. But, if like me, you find some of these people hard to fathom, an even more useful aspect of the book will be the checklists, panels and case studies, ranging from the full (but brilliantly concise) text of Johnson & Johnson's much-praised Credo through to panels on subjects like the so-called 'Please the Boss' syndrome and on how to carry out an ethical audit. Having just led our own team through a process of rebooting our Mission, Vision and Values as we head towards our twentieth anniversary, I know two things. First, managed well, values can help guide high-performance organisations through the stormiest of waters. But second, if managed badly, they can be as dangerous as compasses in magnetic storms. Three Dimensional Ethics provides practical guidance on how to design and run an ethics training program, including how to neutralise or expose those who try to sabotage the process. And expect push-back. Ultimately, business ethics are political, in that they link back to the fundamentals of how business is done, how resources are allocated and, in the end, to the guts of a company's business model.

After 1995, Shell produced a number of scenarios. Two of them are relevant here: Business Class and Prism. In Business Class, globalisation drives a convergence of markets, business models and, ultimately, ethics. Western-style capitalism and associated business values are to some degree triumphant. In Prism, and it's interesting that Attracta and Brian also use the prism metaphor in their Introduction, the world is much more diverse, where the challenge for companies working in different countries and world regions is highly complex.

In this respect I find the coverage of China in Chapter 8 particularly useful. As the 21st Century gets into its stride, with the values and politics of emerging economies like China and India increasingly shaping how business is done, we must ensure that our ethical compasses are robust. The future holds not just climate-change-driven disturbances like Hurricane Katrina but also values-driven magnetic storms that will have the navigational systems of some businesses spinning wildly. Three Dimensional Ethics isn't the complete answer; no book can be. But Lagan and Moran will help growing numbers of business leaders and executives to guage their organisational climate and chart their course through the risks and opportunities of tomorrow's markets.

Attracta and Brian are to be congratulated for Three-Dimensional Ethics' selection in the Australian Financial Review's Top 101 Business Books List (Boss Magazine, January 2006). They offer lively, relevant and above all usable insights into a subject many consider tedious. And they provide a practical perspective on business ethics training--with local case studies, helpful definitions and checklists and reflective personal exercises. You have in your hands an important tool for raising ethics awareness and accelerating the adoption and application of new standards in your organisation to meet rapidly mutating social requirements.

John Elkington

Co-Founder SustainAbility (www.sustainability.com), 1987

Chairman 1996-2005; Chief Entrepreneur, 2005

Author: Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (Capstone Publishing, Oxford: 1997)

London, 5 December 2005